Your first request in Slack

By the end, you have sent OpenSwitchboard a request, followed up without repeating yourself, and handed a real task to a specialist agent.

You need: a Slack workspace where the bot is installed and a channel it is in (or a direct message with it). Ten minutes.

Say something

@switchboard what's the syntax for a postgres lateral join?

You should see a 👀 reaction (the receipt), one status card edited in place, then the answer in a thread. No 👀 means the bot is not in the channel.

Follow up without the mention

Reply in the same thread:

what about a recursive CTE instead?

Every reply in a thread the bot has answered in reaches it, and the thread keeps its agent and model.

Hand off something bigger

@switchboard agent:coding in acme/api: add a retry to the webhook sender

agent:coding picks the agent; in acme/api names the repository. The status card links to a live run page; open it to watch files read, commands run and tests as they happen. The run ends in a pull request.

Check what it did

When the card closes, its first line is the run's shape: time getting ready, thinking, in tools, finishing up. The run page keeps the whole record.

Try a few more

@switchboard agent:review model:anthropic/claude-opus-5 review https://github.com/acme/api/pull/123
@switchboard config show
@switchboard config set me --models.coding openai/gpt-5
@switchboard config instructions me "Always reply in bullet points"
@switchboard help

help lists every agent, directive and command. A refused request says why and who can grant it.

Next

• Configure your defaults: stop typing agent:coding model:… every time.
• Watch a run: the run page, stopping a run, reading history.
• Slack commands: every directive and command.